Yelp, one of the leading places online to find both quick information and reviews for a variety of business types, wants you to be able to do more without leaving its cozy confines.
To that end the company has just unveiled Yelp Platform, which they say will make transactions easy – and performed directly through Yelp.
The first step in Yelp Platform involves food delivery. Beginning with a small pilot group of participating restaurants, Yelp will now allow users to order, pay for, and schedule delivery or pickup right from the site. No need to leave Yelp.
But the food is just the beginning. According to Yelp, they want to be able to provide “transactions” for a bunch of different types of services:
We’ll be rolling out Yelp Platform category by category, beginning today with food delivery and pickup. Starting now, people can order food directly from a select number of restaurants supported by delivery.com and Eat24, like NYC’s Harry’s Italian Pizza Bar and Layaly Mediterranean Grill in SF. Eventually, consumers will be able to order whatever meal they’re craving for delivery or pickup at thousands of local restaurants across the US, directly from those businesses’ Yelp listings.
In the coming months, we’ll add categories like spas, yoga studios, salons and dentist appointments starting with Booker, Intuit’s Demandforce and MindBody. Consumers can expect us to add more categories in the future.
So not only will you be able to order Chinese takeout straight from Yelp, but you’ll also be able to schedule your dentist appointment to clean those cashew chicken-glazed teeth.
Yelp says that the new transactions (for food) should be ready on the desktop & mobile site plus on Yelp for iOS (Android coming soon).
Unlike services like Amazon Prime or the new Google Shopping Express pilot program, Yelp isn’t actually delivering anything there. What they are doing, however, is setting up a transaction service that makes it easier for users to buy, schedule, and book directly from yelp.com and from mobile.